Argos aims to circulate writing about topical matters of public and political import that is local, critical and accessible. We believe critical intellectual conversation should be heard here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, not simply published for credit in international fora for more limited and specialised audiences. Of particular interest to us is writing that grounds its concern with the public or political good of place-making in theory or philosophy.

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auckland

by Argos as You as Argos

...an accelerated pace, is core business for New Zealand universities. When we hear the word ‘university’, the images that come to mind directly link to the people-facts we know about our own universities. For the University of Auckland, the image is of 2807 Māori, 3153 Pasifika, and a university in which Māori, Pasifika and Asian students combined out-number ‘European’ and ‘Other’ students combined. Our mind’s eye sees thousands of Māori...

...rts of the body as dismembered during execution’ (c.1300). Over time, the reference to ‘four’ loosened and in the 1520s we see it attributed to a ‘portion of a town’ (identified by the class or race of people who live there). Auckland does not appear to have had ‘quarters’ until around 2009, when suddenly two appeared, dividing the city into spaces for leisure/culture by the Waterfront (Wynyard Quarter), and learning/business along the ridge abov...

...nd discuss the future of education. There are many examples of this, such as the deliberative forums and street politics of the Quebec student movement in 2012 and the WATU (We Are The University) campaigns recently formed in Auckland and Wellington. Staff in some places are setting up parallel institutions, like the Council for the Defence of British Universities and advocacy organisations such as Campus Compact. We must continue to...

...ophets of the eternal truth of the reality of equality: for the realisation of a world against hierarchy; the end of capital’s dictation! The Situation —From whence we came! There was little in the way of real politics on the Auckland campus at the beginning of 2011. There was, of course, the presence of various ‘political’ groups and institutions such as the student association and a number of labour unions, but these were all thoroughly subsume...

...f university student protests has unfolded and continues to play out in what is increasingly aware of itself as an international student movement. In such a context, when in late 2011 hundreds of students at the University of Auckland embarked on a series of occupations and protests, the response of the New Zealand Minister of Tertiary Education Steven Joyce that the protests ‘didn’t add up to me’ seemed naively innocent if not ignorant of global...

...rts of the body as dismembered during execution’ (c.1300). Over time, the reference to ‘four’ loosened and in the 1520s we see it attributed to a ‘portion of a town’ (identified by the class or race of people who live there). Auckland does not appear to have had ‘quarters’ until around 2009, when suddenly two appeared, dividing the city into spaces for leisure/culture by the Waterfront (Wynyard Quarter), and learning/business along the ridge abov...

(download as pdf here) Foreword What might be achieved by replacing a real strategic plan with an alternate? By producing another plan that calls itself the ‘real’ one? Perhaps such a document needs to fit in before it can interrupt anything, to mimic an exterior in order to reconstruct an interior. The official Strategic Plan 2013-2020 offers one version of the University of Auckland but there is an inverse image that is rarely...

...s behint his back. And then he would start a bumming, and it was bum, bum, bum, stop; then bum, bum bum, reet down till t’other end; and then he’d set down and git a bit o’paper and write a bit'. Last year, University of Auckland staff and students and members of the public marched up Queen Street chanting ‘Cuts hurt’ and ‘When education’s under attack, stand up, fight back!’ in response to the National government’s funding cuts and educatio...

If I were to wish for something, I would wish not for wealth or power but for the passion of possibility, for the eye [. . .] that sees possibility ever. — Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or The many worlds of the pluriversity The name Argos, allied in Greek mythology with the epithet panoptes (all-seeing) as Argus panoptes, implies an unwearying watcher, and, as the primordial 'lord of the neatherd' (herdsman), the very name of the land he watc...

...the existing statutes of universities which make it easier to employ people on temporary and short-term contracts and impossible for academics to appeal to third parties in cases of dismissal. In 2010, the University of Auckland senior administration proposed removing key working conditions (including Academic Grades and Standards Criteria, Disciplinary Procedures and Research and Study Leave) from the existing collective agreement and maki...